I’m not particularly good at introductions, so I’ll make this as brief and forgettable as possible. Hi, I’m Halley. I’ve been playing since January of last year, and I’m still as addicted as I was when I first started. My current main is a level 53 Night Elf Shadow Priest (he’s such a pretty boy). Even though I’m a girl, I primarily play male characters because they have better dances.

Phew, anyway. I figured that I’d bring something exciting with my first entry on here, and after finding the loot table for Naxxramas, I thought I’d share it with you all.

Some of the things that piqued my interest were the pieces of Atiesh, Medivh’s staff, and the new legendary caster weapon (finally!) Not sure if these are confirmed or not, but apparently, depending on which class your caster is, the stats will vary. Also worth noting is the Corrupted Ashbringer. Obviously, to get the Legendary Ashbringer, you’ll have to go through some ridiculous quest, but the epic one’s stats are already pretty damn awesome. Improved chances to hit and crit, plus a built in Crusader enchant? Not bad, even if it is at the cost of 25 stamina.

I’ve been in queue for Arathi Basin for about 8 months. Seriously. Every time I log one of the first things I do is queue up for AB, WSG, and AV.I’ve played more WSG and AV than I know what do about, but yesterday was the first time, with any of my toons, that I’ve ever gotten into AB. What is that all about? It’s not a server thing because I’ve been in the same boat on Khadgar, Stormrage and now Eitrigg. AB is never up, even on AB Bounus Honor weekends. If it sucked I’d write it off as that, but it was a blast. The went really quick (as opposed to WSG which can last hours, or AV which can last days) – I got in 3 times in a row and all 3 rounds lasted under 10 minutes. Of course the horde owned those three rounds as well but that’s to be expected. I just hope I don’t have to wait another 8 months to get in again.

1. First encounter was a lvl 60 hunter who waited until I was at 25% health fighting a 54 Elite Dragon to kill me. Then he waited close by and would kill me the second I re spawned with no health. Finally I waited until he was fighting a mob, re spawned, got on my mount and rode off to get back to full health. He chased me the entire way to the flight path and then I realised he was unflagged. I left the protection of the flight path with full health, rode down the hill, dismounted and told him to bring it on. Chicken Alliance POS wouldn’t flag and fight like a man. So, I left.

2. I’m sititng in XR flagged and Paranoid goes off telling me theres a stealthed rogue nearby. I start riding around in circles all over XR so I won’t get backstabbed. 15 minutes later I’m bored stiff. I stop running, he backstabs me, kidney shots me, I get in some hits, get a nice overpower but die. I respawn, ride around with another warrior, the rogue unstealths we charge, he gets away stealthed and I’m back to riding around in circles for an hour. Where is the fun in having to ride around in circles for hours?

I don’t mind getting my ass kicked, I’m a PvP n00b. I expect to lose and learn and really do appreciate a good fight. But, if this is going to be my flagged life night after night I’m going to have to roll up the flag until the 4th.

Chris Anderson asked me to participate in giving a toast at the Wired Rave Awards dinner about why WoW was so great and giving a Raver award to Rob Pardo, Lead Game Designer of World of Warcraft (WoW), and his team. I had my own opinions about what made WoW so successful, but I asked Rob with whom I had the opportunity of sitting next to at the dinner. We had a longish conversation about games and WoW and was impressed by Rob’s insights and practical experience.

Rob was a guild leader of a hardcore raiding guild on Everquest. Rob is a hardcore gamer. He loved the game, but realized that there were things that could be better designed. He looked at all of the MMOs and together with his team, built a game that was better in each of the different components than any of its competitors while keeping the core culture and functionality of MMOs. They added some important new features including the rest system, team PvP without segregating players from the opposing factions, and a completely quest driven experience, which were new innovations. They also paid attention to issues that existing games experienced or they anticipated would experience and designed WoW to deal with them.

For instance, WoW does not allow buying and selling game gold. However, according to Rob, it doesn’t break the economy as some people think. The game is designed to minimize the negative impact of “farmers”. The quests and and equipment are designed so that there are many key things that you can’t buy with game gold. The issue of gold buying is primarily a matter of players feeling that it is unfair – the great thing about WoW and similar MMOs is that everyone starts equally regardless of what they do in real life.

Although Rob was a hardcore player in Everquest, he designed WoW so that it allowed casual players to have as much fun as hardcore players. It really shows and as a guild custodian of a guild that has many casual players, the ability for casual players to have fun in WoW is very important. Rob mentioned that one of they keys to success of a game is to make sure that the game is fun in the first 5 minutes. I think many game developers forget this and focus on gamers who are “serious” and willing to invest significant time to learn to play or wait a long time to have their first “fun event”. I think it is the breadth and diversity of the players that Rob tried to appeal to that is the key to success of WoW and he did it through attention to detail and trying to get each part right rather than focus on a single killer feature.

If you guessed a pet baby murloc, then you’re right. For the lucky folks who attended BlizzCon (or the few willing to shell out $600 on eBay), there were a limited number of gift cards available. When you scratch off the gunk on the back, you get a code number which can then be brought to NPC’s in Ironforge or Orgrimmar. Upon entry of the code, you are rewarded with a lively and well-behaved little gurgler.

Pardon me for saying so, but they’re freaking precious. As someone who has acquired a menagerie of pets (horned owls, tabby cats, parrots) not counting my hunter’s actual pet, I’ve found little Murky to be my favorite. He sings, he dances, and you’ve never heard anything so cute as his little baby murloc sounds.

And thus, I have reinforced every stereotype about women who play hunters. *sigh*

Every patch there’s a bunch of stuff that changes that isn’t in the patch notes. The most obvious examples are bugs that are introduced in the technical side of the client software, particularly when no technical changes can be found in the patch notes (anyone else here have to upgrade from an FX5200 around patch 1.7?). Fortunately, the same site I was watching for pre-release details now has a growing list of undocumented changes. They’re still unlikely to work out that X% of the play base will probably have to upgrade their video drivers to avoid crippling crashes, but at least those of us not able to get into the test realms will have a bit of a heads-up on the stuff Blizzard couldn’t be bothered documenting.

I’ve decided to play Deadicus as a flagged for PvP warrior on Stormrage. Why? Theres a different edge to the game knowing I could get jumped at any given moment. Innocent pursuits such as mining become a lot less tedious when you need to keep checking your backside. I’ve started to play WSG and AV a little bu t I think I like the danger of the flagged world better.

Being new to the world of gank is already giving me some troubles. I mostly solo around Azeroth and am a BIG target just waiting to get ganked. People jumping out from behind trees, stealthed rogues and groups of Alliance players are some of my day one encounters. I’m looking for some advice from other PvP players so that I can stay alive a little bit longer.

This morning while grinding Dunemaul Ogres (lvl 46-48 mobs) in Tanaris I kept seeing this lvl 57 undead rogue rounding them up and killing chunks of them at a time. Since I was on the compound quest and still needed to kill a few more I invited the rogue to group thinking what I’d lose in XP I’d make up for in time. I got no reply so I kept killing on my own. A little later I saw the rogue again doing the same thing and again I offered and invite and again got no reply. Since now I only needed the boss I asked the rogue for some help. No answer. At this point I was just standing there and was starting to notice that this rogue was acting a bit odd. When she would walk it was more like a choppy skip rather than fluid movement, and the attact pattern seemed almost identical. Also, as soon as she killed a mob and looted it she would turn a full circle and then attack the nearest mob right away. But something else was off, her gear didn’t look like lvl 57 stuff so I went in for a closer look. All her stuff was green, and all much below her level – 29 Shoulders, 34 Boots, 36 Cloak and weilding a lvl 38 Mace. By now I was pretty conviced there was no person driving this toon and tried saying a bunch of stuff to it to gague reactions. When I’d whisper “Hey” I’d get an instant “Hey” reply, but anything else was met with an emoted reaction or silcence. Dancing with her get her to dance with me, etc.

Also if I was too close it wouldn’t attack, rather just kind of stand there as if the player was AFK. Once I backed up a bit it would continue on it’s way attacking mob after mob. Since I was figuring out the attack pattern pretty quickly I wondered what would happen if I jumped in a second early. While it was killing the next mob I picked out the next one and got in range. I waited for it run towards it before I’d use my wand to tag the mob first. Just as I thought the rogue kept on killing the mob and I got the credit for it. I did this on 5 or 6 mobs just to see if I could get any reaction from the rogue. Eventually the lack of loot must have gotten someones attention and it stopped attacking and come up to me. Again I tried talking but got no reaction. I offered to group and it/he/she agreed. I killed another 4-5 mobs grouped with and the attacks were totally different. Someone was clearly driving now, however they never said anything other than “hey” back to me, no matter what I asked. I said thanks and ungrouped then took off in a big circle around the compound. When I got back to it it was back to the sketching walking and predictable attack pattern. I offered to group and got no reaction. I guess the script had already forgotten me.